Our dive into Goblins vs Gnomes cards continues today as we explore another one of the fun themes coming in Hearthstone’s explosive first expansion.

Goblins and gnomes are notorious inventors who create incredible mechanized constructs by combining their keen intellect, some spare parts, and a little elbow grease. While goblin mechanical constructs may have a penchant for exploding and gnomish devices may turn you into a chicken, sometimes these pint-sized inventors manage to get something functioning as intended. Inconceivable!

From harvest golems to fel-spewing cannons, these “mechs” that have been engineered by both goblins and gnomes play a vital role in the struggle to see which diminutive race of engineers ultimately comes out on top. The top of what remains to be seen.

Mechs synergize well with each other—you could say they don’t like to be a-part!

If there’s one thing goblins and gnomes do well, it’s making sure their individual mechs are compatible with the other mechs they build, regardless of what the end result may look like. In Goblins vs Gnomes, many of the new “Mech”-themed cards synergize with other Mech cards, so expect Mechs to bolster other Mechs’ battle capability, assist your Hero, and other zany effects! Mech matters

Got an update from one of our designers that wanted provide more information on how your Followers gain XP when you send them out on Garrison Missions.

When Followers are below a mission’s level, they get a reduced percentage of the mission XP as well as any bonus XP earned.

Followers that are 1-2 levels below the mission level:

The Follower’s level number is displayed in orange, meaning they only receive 50% of the mission XP and bonus XP. Followers that are 3 or more levels below the mission level:

The Follower’s level number is displayed in red, meaning they only receive 10% of the mission XP and bonus XP. Before a hotfix that was implemented at 5:52pm PST, followers in red received 0% of the mission XP; and we felt that was not what we wanted since the UI didn’t indicate that was the case.

Note that while level 90 missions may only award ~100XP, level 100 missions award much more, closer to the range of ~1500XP. So 10% of that is still a good amount for a level 90 Follower, even if they won't be doing a great job at getting the bonus loot until they gain some combat experience.

We’d love to continue hearing feedback on how it feels to level Followers, what missions are available, and how these new numbers feel.

An item now needs to be at least item level 560 or above before being eligible to be scaled up to 650 in level 100 Battlegrounds and Arenas.

Items

The following items are now uncommon quality (green) so there's less award pop-ups when retrieving the them from Garrison work orders. There's been no change to the item's functionality or availability.

Shieldtronic Shield should now correctly create a damage absorption shield instead of reflecting the damage back at an attacker.

Bug Fix

Resolved an issue where boosting characters that have XP disabled could wind up being unable to level.

Blue Teme

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Bug FixsIs the enchanters study suppose to not disenchant epics? Or is it bugged? Intended (CM_Lore)

Is it intended to obtain ilvl 660 tournament gear for gold? Is it an exploit people make use of? Obtaining it, yes, as it's only usable in War Games. Using it to bypass ilevel requirements is not. (CM_Lore)

just a thought: scale the 680 rings back to 640 for anyone without the quest completed We're exploring options, too early to say at this point. (Rygarius)

Doesn't seem to mention the change made to the Smuggler's Run loot table - no resource boxes any more? We generally do not note changes designed to fix an exploit. (Rygarius)

ItemFlavor

Unique_Cloak_002_p1 - The cloak of one with an affinity toward wolves.

P2_Unique_Helm_001 - The ancient crown of Rakkis, first ruler of Westmarch.

P2_Unique_BarbBelt_006 - Few in this world can truly be called champions.

P2_Unique_Belt_008 - Rumors have persisted for centuries that the crusaders maintain a secret bunker in Kehjistan, filled with ancient relics of unbelievable power. When the need is great, Crusaders are allowed to borrow one of these relics. The existence of this crusader belt would seem to confirm the existence of this bunker.

P2_Unique_Staff_003 - The poisonous hatred of many a man was harnessed to create this staff.

P2_Unique_Bracer_006 - "Cover your wrists in righteousness that you may strike with the will of the gods." —Tenets of the Veradani

Unique_Gem_020_x1 - “I made a very pretty gemstone once, to use should I ever come to face Dirgest, but I was hungry so I traded it for spiced meats and some wine. Those meats were excellent!”-Covetous Shen

Unique_Gem_017_x1 - The gizzard of the molten wildebeest evinced such extraordinary properties when steeped in the correct mixture of alchemical reagents that the animals were hunted to extinction long ago.

Unique_Gem_018_x1 - “The Mage Lord has no vision. He called my ideas a subversion of the natural order and forbade this gem’s creation. I can only assume there is a Jaq`taar Assassin searching for me even now.”-Darum, formally of the Vizerei Mage Clan

Unique_Gem_019_x1 - Chau Thanh of Guozhi designed a gem which would transport the pain and suffering of a physical attack to an undisclosed location. When asked about the ultimate destination of this damage, she would simply smile and mutter “Well deserved. Well deserved.”

Unique_Gem_016_x1 - Chuanyang of Xiansai designed a gem which would transport magical energies from their target to the workshop of his greatest competitor, Chau Thanh. He created several copies of this gem before he mysteriously disappeared.

HealthPotionLegendary_08 - “If I learned one thing from my years in the dungeons it’s this: fear is a great motivator. We all need some fear in our lives!” - Royal Apothecary Jentulf at his reinstatement ceremony.

Demonhunter

Custom Engineering : Now also increases the maximum amount of Sentry Charges. (Datamined text says that it's increased "to 2", but that may be a typo and charges are increased "by 2", for a total of 4 Charges with the Passive)

Challenge Mode Daily Quest and Seals of Fate There is no garrison prerequisite. There was a logic error with the Challenge mode quests that could cause the daily randomizer to select an invalid value (and thus leave no quest available for the day), and we have a hotfix in flight to address that issue.

Also, since I've seen this come up a few times, the currency turn-in quests for the Tempered Seals of Fate that are used for Draenor bonus rolls are not available until the first raid zone, Highmaul, unlocks during the week of December 2. Take your time and enjoy Draenor; no need to worry about having to stockpile bonus rolls ahead of time. (Official Forums)

Queues and Character Transfers Just to answer some of the people who are unhappy with the queues, I don't have any specific answers I can give on Free Character Moves as of yet. I'll repeat what I said in the US forums that we are working to make sure realms are stable and performing well before we do further evaluations on what FCMs would look like should we do them. i.e. Which realms would need them and where would the moves be too, etc. I don't want to promise anything at this time, but we're not unaware of the concerns and frustrations people are experiencing with queues.

We've seen an increase in performance overall and have many more people playing and able to play than the past couple of days. We realize there are still queues to contend with, but we haven't walked away or called things "done" as of yet.

Neth, you guys really are not doing much to alleviate any issues. It would be nice if at least one of you would come out and admit your too cheap to pay for the proper hardware to handle the work load and feel like it wont be needed in the long run. Our short term discomfort (until subscriptions fall off after launch) is an acceptable trade off for blizz. Seriously, someone from blizz just come out and admit you guys messed up and this issues will subside once the player base decreases. I bet you would have a lot less upset players if you just told the truth. Being lied to and screwed over is worse than just being screwed over. There are no lies being perpetrated in regard to the efforts being made on our end to alleviate issues. I know people like to think this is a truth and it seems really odd to cling to that. There is a very high demand by people to play the game. We are making efforts to support that demand in a variety of ways and we've been making great progress. We're still very early in the day today, so we will continue to be watching the effect of these changes once we get into the more populous times for the realms. Seriously. The efforts or the teams on this end are constant and ongoing at all levels. They are incredibly dedicated to doing what they can to get everyone into the game and playing the great content we have waiting for them.

I'm sorry you are frustrated. I want nothing more than for you to not be frustrated. Hopefully today will go better for you and many others. High population realms may be problematic when it comes to queue times, but we are making efforts to get more people in than hanging in the queues. Our efforts aren't stopping any time soon. No one is sitting on their laurels (I'm not sure why you'd want to really.) People will accuse us of many many things I'm sure. Conspiracies arise that just aren't true and there isn't much we can do to counter them than to keep working toward improving the experiences of the community that is here to play. We are very seriously continuing to monitor all of the changes we've made and their impact. Things have improved a great deal and we will continue to make improvements where we can. That's all I can really say. Some will believe and others won't. That isn't going to make us throw up our hands and give up. We wouldn't do that. (Official Forums)

We just added new hardware with this maintenance in attempts of coping with demand. Realms are looking pretty stable. (Bashiok)Stable, yes. Sufficient, no. It's a simple matter of Blizzard blindly putting it's pocketbook ahead of its customers. Money > Rep There is no problem I've had in the last 72 hours I could fix with money. If there was I'd do it. Actually not true: there was one, and we had more blades next restart -- problem not as simple (kurtismcc)One cant fix problemshappening now with money, but better preparations could have been made. 2 hour queue time still. Some servers are very high pop. We know this is a problem, but problem can't be solved with more hardware. We are still working on other solutions. (kurtismcc)The calibre of those solving problems now doesn't absolve Blizzard's lack of preparation. You choose your perspective on such matters. Mistakes were made, but there's no grand money conspiracy. (kurtismcc)Blizzard had a good idea on the amount of people returning from expansion sales Sales does not equal engagement, and engagement drives concurrency. We have a very engaging expansion, and I'm happy to have worked on it.but your network should be able to handle enough users to equal your subscriber # and then some for growth load isn't linear - clumps are the issue like the forum post says - it's an n-squared problem (kurtismcc)Since it was known that high pop realms would be a problem; there should have been free migrations prior to launch. even if we'd predicted it, wouldn't have helped; most people wouldn't have seen the need to move prior to launch (kurtismcc)

ClassesMageAs much as I hate to report it, you can mount up while moving with Ice Floes. I assume that's not intended. We're going to allow it for now. If it becomes a problem, we'll change it back. (Celestalon)

ArtNot even a single mention of Blood Elf models through the whole Blizzcon? If you're not doing them, tell us please. We're doing them. Nothing else to announce until we have previews to show. (WatcherDev)

Character / ItemsWho should I tweet about profession-type stuff? Looking at the cap on Apexis Crystals currently What's the concern with the cap? That's more an item issue than professions per se. CC: @olandgren (WatcherDev)If you could instead save up 37k or w/e then choose a slot to fill, I might actually do it Very reasonable point - we'll discuss. We usually have at least some slush room on currency caps. (WatcherDev)

PvPAre there any plans to make 5v5 skirmishes? No. Skirmishes is meant to be an introduction to the arena experience. Considered only doing 2v2 but know people would want 3s. (holinka)

combat log event "encounter_start" happens in pve any chance of having this in pvp, to enable accurate arena/bg combat logging? yes we have it on our todo list (holinka)

Does MMR get Zero'ed at the beginning of each season along with the Character rating? Your MMR gets reset when you gain a level but not between seasons. (holinka)is there a design reason for this? Starting season on 1500 MMR win 100 lose 30 would you have the same final CR as 2k MMR start? We don't think resetting MMR each season is good for the game. High rated will stomp over low rated. No value in that. (holinka)

Hey Holinka, will PvP Items have sockets? And what about tertiar stats? Not at launch. Perhaps down the road. (holinka)Ah thank you^^. I don't know what that means"down the road". Do you mean at the start of WoD Season 1 on 2nd of december? It means, we haven't decided if or when. (holinka)

Ever thought of a battleground dota/smite style, 5vs5 3way? Yes but it's a very odd fit for WoW and there are a lot of other games (including Heroes) doing it. Doesn't feel natural. (holinka)

LoreUnfortunately Jaina is too far gone. Corrupted just like everyone else in the alliance. Not at all, man. Jaina doesn't trust the Horde to self-govern... Can you blame her? (DaveKosak)

In WoD timeline: Gul'dan the only one with fel energy/green skin? Possible exposure changes rest? Or staying brown? Gul'dan won't stay down for long - he'll find other fools. I mean, followers. (DaveKosak)

I said that the Kirin Tor's ability to assert control over how the alliance uses magic has waned over time. (craig_amai) That doesn't mean it's gone entirely. We haven't seen it come to a head in a while amidst other crises. (craig_amai)Thank you for the clarity. Could you take more questions on this? Are you able to say more on the topic? I keep up with lore, but my focus is more on gameplay and world. Mr. Copeland will typically be a bit stronger with the lore-fu. (craig_amai)

Any chance Blood Elf Paladins can get a red casting animation, or anything other than the yellow hands? Blood Knight love? Part of your lore is giving up the blood aspect/draining the Naaru and embracing the light, no? (Muffinus)

[Update 6:01 pm PST] We’re continuing to work toward greater realm stability and address the service issues impacting latency. Our current biggest hurdle is the concentration of players in specific areas and zones, and an unexpected effect of that concentration on the realm stability. We’re continuing to maintain a lowered realm population cap to help with the stability, which is resulting in increased queue times. We’re seeing some increase in individual zones drop which are causing localized player disconnections as we get into primetime in the Americas, and if someone is disconnected they will quite likely run into a queue to log back in. Work is progressing on improving realm stability through fixes targeting individual in-game issues, as well as on the backend game and network services.

[Update] 8:00 pm PST

Our top priority continues to be service issues impacting performance and long wait times on North American realms. We recently pushed a server change that caused disconnects, and as a result login services are heavily impacted as players attempt to (re)log in to the game. If you experience issues logging in, please be patient and wait a few minutes before trying again. We’re continuing to work to address other stability and latency issues as well as make additional improvements in game performance.

[Update] 9:00 p.m. PST

We’ll be performing maintenance on all NA realms beginning at 5 a.m. PST in order to address issues with realm stability. We anticipate this process will last approximately 4 hours and appreciate your patience during this time.

We’ll be performing unscheduled maintenance on all NA realms beginning at 5 a.m. PST in order to address issues with realm stability. We anticipate this process will last approximately 4 hours and appreciate your patience during this time.

We’ll be performing unscheduled maintenance on all EU realms beginning at 7 am CEST in order to address issues with realm stability. We anticipate this process will last approximately 4 hours and appreciate your patience during this time.

If you’ve recently boosted a new level 90 character for Warlords of Draenor, you will start within the blasted lands with a limited number of spells at your disposal. Once you go through the Dark Portal and as you progress through Tanaan Jungle, more spells and abilities will be unlocked. Once you’ve completed Tanaan Jungle, you should have most of your spells and abilities (for level 90) available to you. The remaining will be unlocked shortly after the beginning quests in Frostfire Ridge (for Horde) or Shadowmoon Valley (for Alliance). This system has been designed to help players who have newly boosted to ease into their new character.

If you’re a veteran player and are absolutely sure that you want to skip this progression of spells and abilities, you can either swap specs or queue for an instance. This will unlock the remaining spells and abilities for you.

We're tracking a few issues that are impeding access or progression with Garrisons. To address these issues we'll be restarting some Garrison services which will impact access to the Garrison for some realms. While these restarts progress, this may result in characters not being able to phase into the Garrison, or become temporarily stuck while phasing in. This is a temporary effect and should resolve as these services return.

We're continuing to look into other issues outside of this impact on Garrison access, including realm latency and its affect on gameplay and questing elements. We've implemented dozens of hotfixes over the last few hours, and will be continuing to work toward resolution of any outstanding issues.

It doesn't matter if the garrisons are working when we can't even quest do to the ridiculous lag. The majority of our fixes are aimed at issues that are resulting in latency. Latency itself is not a singular issue, but is the effect of many compound issues--a few of which are related to Garrisons.

Resolved an issue where Keg Smash may sometimes not generate Chi when used.

Quests

Artificer Romuul: Resolved an issue where players may sometimes not receive this quest after completing the Embaari Defense Crystal event.

Book Burning: Shadowborne Dementor should now always drop a Shadow Council Spellbook.

Shivertail's Den: Made a change to make it easier to receive credit for "Find Shivertail's Mother".

The Great Salvation: Draenei prisoners should spawn more frequently now.

The Warlord's Guard: Increased the spawn rates for Thunk, Gullok, and Splorg.

These Colors Don't Run: Characters now receive credit towards planting a Frostwolf Banner when they defeat or help in defeating a Bladespire Ogre with the exception of Bladespire Mauler, Chef, Boarbuster, Ogron, and Goresnout.

Wrath of Gronn: Increased the spawn rate for Captive Gronns.

Creatures and NPCs

Collision geometry has been added to Drek'Thar, Thrall, and Gazlowe in Frostfire Ridge.

Gorg the Host should now allow multiple players to receive credit for defeating it.

Battlegrounds and Arenas

Resolved an issue where item levels for Battlegrounds, Arenas, and Skirmishes brackets below level 100 were not scaling correctly.

Items

Epic rings that are a part of the Legendary quest line can no longer be disenchanted.

Resolved an issue where the Eclipse indicator in the UI can sometimes not match the Druid's current Balance power.

Quests

Back to Work / Looking for Lumber: Greatly increased the number of trees available to mark for both Horde and Alliance versions of the quest. Additionally, Lunarfall Ravens respawn much more quickly now.

Closing the Door: Resolved an issue where Void Portals may sometimes not close correctly.

Honor Has Its Rewards: The Shamanstone no longer requires characters to interact with it and will grant its blessing to players that are nearby.

Quakefist: Quakefist now spawns outside of the cave, making it easier to locate.

Ship Salvage / What We Need: Drudgeboat Salvage should now respawn more quickly.

The Clarity Elixir: Pristine Star Lily can now be looted by multiple players at the same time.

These Colors Don't Run: Greatly increased the spawn rates for Bladespire Ogres and made them share tap credit.

Vengeance for the Fallen: Bleeding Hollow orcs respawn much more quickly now.

Creatures

Durotan at Beastwatch in Gorgrond is now significantly tougher.

Gorum can now be tapped by multiple characters. All players who contributed to defeating Gorum will now become eligible for loot.

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios

Challenge Mode

Characters can switch specializations once more after the Challenge Mode has started.

As with raids in Mists of Pandaria, we're staggering the unlock of difficulties for the first raid in the expansion. As with those prior staggered unlocks, our goal here is to let you have fun playing, leveling, and to have time to explore and prepare yourself and your raid group before jumping into this first raid. We'll share information on the unlock schedule for Blackrock Foundry in the future, but are currently expecting it to unlock approximately 8 weeks after Highmaul.

December 2, 2014

Highmaul opens with Normal and Heroic difficulties accessible.

December 9, 2014

Mythic difficulty and the first wing of Raid Finder (Kargath/Butcher/Brackenspore) unlock.

Lunar Peak should no longer incorrectly display as having 2 charges (it was always only 1 charge). Additionally, the tooltip will be updated in a future patch to clarify the damage increase only applies to Moonfire's initial damage.

Binding Shot should now correctly stun targets affected by silence when they move more than 5 yards from the arrow. Additionally, targets should no longer incorrectly break out of stealth on entering Binding Shot's area of effect.

Mage

Fire

Combustion is now learned at level 80 (up from level 77).

Monk

Brewmaster

Stance of the Sturdy Ox now increases armor by 75% (up from 50%), and reduces magic damage taken by 15% (up from 10%).

Priest

General

Power Word: Shield now absorbs 20% more damage.

Discipline

Holy Nova's healing has been reduced by 41%.

Penance's damage and healing has been increased by 20%.

Rogue

Talents

Resolved an issue where Posthaste may sometimes not trigger correctly with Disengage.

Warlock

Destruction

Fire and Brimstone should now correctly hit all secondary targets within 10 yards, regardless of whether they're in combat with the Warlock.

Talents

Damage caused by Burning Rush while Soul Link is active should no longer incorrectly cause the Warlock to go into combat.

Stacks of Demonbolt debuff should no longer be incorrectly removed by Hand of Protection.

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios

The Postmaster received a talking to and should no longer be mailing large amounts of unimportant items to players.

Pet Battle

Grommloc, the delightfully dreadful baby murloc masquerading as Grommash Hellscream, legendary leader of the Warsong clan is now available. Players eligible to receive this pet will find it in their in-game mailbox. An Achievement for obtaining this battle pet will be added in a future patch.

How do I get to Draenor?When the clock hits midnight (or whatever respective time zone you're in), you'll see the following things happen:

A server message (yellow text in your chat window) will be displayed, signaling the launch of Warlords of Draenor!

If you've already upgraded your account to Warlords of Draenor, a quest will popup in your quest log, directing you to the Blasted Lands. You do not need to be in a major city to receive this quest. If you haven't upgraded your account, you won't be able to receive the quest or venture in Draenor until you do.

Once you get to Blasted Lands, speak to Khadgar outside the Dark Portal to head to Draenor!

Note: you don't need to be online at midnight to get the quest, it'll be waiting for you whenever you do decide to login.

Do I need to install Warlords of Draenor or use the install disc?If you're already playing on retail realms, you have all the files you need to play Warlords of Draenor - no further downloads or installs are required. If you haven't updated your WoW client to version 6.0.3 yet, you can either just run the Battle.net app to do so, or install the game using the Game Disc DVD (if you bought a Box Copy of Warlords of Draenor).

Do i need to logout at midnight before I start leveling?Nope! If you've already upgraded your account to Warlords of Draenor, you won't need to do anything! You can always double check your account status by logging into the Account Management page at https://us.battle.net/account/management/

What happens if I boost a character to level 90 after Warlords of Draenor launches?

If you haven't upgraded your account to Warlords of Draenor yet, your boosted character will be placed in Blasted Lands.

Will I be able to invite a friend to my realm and quest together, vise versa? didn't see anything pertaining to this answered, would be nice to know. Yup! You'll be grouped together on the same realm.

What happens if someone boosted a character, he's in Blasted Lands with the Iron Invasion quest chain but he can't login to play again till after WOD goes live? The quest chain actually doesn't disappear when WoD launches. The Feat of Strength (and associated title) is no longer awarded, but you can still do the quests, gaining the quest rewards (gear) and the pet, Iron Starlette. So your friend would be able to continue the quest chain in Blasted Lands and unlock the rest of his abilities.